Happy Baby (7 page)

“She would clean the wells with a toothbrush so the Palestinians can have more babies,” Toine says to me, then turns to Jessie. “Yuen is giving me the apartment behind the theater. Theo stays with me until I leave. I don’t like living with people anymore.”

“But it was nice of you to let Theo stay,” she says. “So you’re either not as mean as you pretend. Or you have something else planned.”

“It was nice,” I say, swallowing. The back of my throat is numb and hard. I pull on my forehead and try to stretch the skin. “Toine’s the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

I watch him use the razor like a chef, quickly splitting then crushing the piles together. Everything comes easy to him. He has the best spot. He outsells all of the other salesmen. He’s Yuen’s favorite. All of the women love him. He doesn’t care about anything. The world gives him whatever he wants.

“Anyway,” he says. “You haven’t heard my story.” I know what he’s going to tell her. It’s the first thing he told me when we first went for a drink. He had said I didn’t look like I could work for the Casa Rosso because the district is such a violent place, but he went to Yuen and I was hired, because, he said, the space wasn’t being used anyway. Our first night together he told me about the desert.

“Listen,” Toine says to Jessie. “After you left to wash shit from the legs of black babies I bought a motorcycle. You don’t know the difference between a two-stroke and a four-stroke bike, but what I had was a two-stroke. On a two-stroke bike you have to mix oil with the gasoline. It’s meant for driving in places where there are no roads.” Toine hands me the mirror to do my line first. This is also Toine’s way. He knows he will always be left the longest line; he doesn’t worry about it. He never shares a joint, he rolls everybody their own so he doesn’t have to bother passing. “I took a boat to Algiers and rode into the Sahara. After fifteen days I was stopped by a caravan. Saharawi bandits still fighting for the Western Sahara with the Moroccans, the Spanish, and the French. That all ended without any result in 1991. But this was 1986. They took my motorcycle and left me in the dunes to die.”

I snort my line and hand the mirror to Jessie, who places it over the box filled with photos. She’s holding her leg steady and I’m worried she’s going to start shaking again and send the last of the powder to the air.

“What happened?” she asks.

“The desert is growing,” he says.

“I know that,” she says.

“You don’t know anything. These people are fighting over sand.”

“I’ve seen more wars than you.”

“Congratulations, G.I. Jane,” he tells her dryly. “In El Oued they shovel it from their doorsteps in the mornings. The dunes have buried whole cities. It’s like fighting the sea. Only the bandits know the Sahara. After three days, when the leaders of the bandits came in a car and drove me to an oasis, I didn’t ask them any questions.”

Jessie is leaning back with her arms at her sides. When I look at her now she looks a bit like my ex-wife, a little taller, a little prettier. Zahava also had black hair and liked cocaine. There was a time when my wife would do anything for some cocaine. If Zahava could see me now she wouldn’t believe it. She always complained I lacked ambition.

I run my hand under my nose. Toine and Jessie’s eyes are locked together. I bite at the inside of my mouth. I suspect the drugs don’t affect him at all. He just likes to get other people high.

“It was thrilling, really,” he says.

Jessie shakes her head then dives into the mirror. “We’re only talking about ourselves,” she says, lifting her face, snorting heavily, running her hands over her head as if she’s just stepped from a pool. She sucks on her finger then picks up the mirror and hands it to Toine with both hands. “What’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done, Theo?”

“Hang out with you guys,” I say, and they both laugh.

“You see why I let him stay.”

“I like you,” Jessie says. “You’re nice.”

At night I sleep with my memories and my Italian poster that Toine translated for me. I hear them arguing in the other room. They sound as if they’re in the bed next to me. I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them.

“Please,” she whispers.

“Be quiet,” Toine says in a low, selfish voice.

I imagine Adel, the Nigerian prostitute, hitting me across my face with a whip, cutting my ear. I shake my head. I imagine Toine pulling me down the stairs by my hair. I concentrate, try to make my mind clear. My savings are gone now and I have what I make at the theater. My life before now wasn’t worth anything. I hear Toine’s hand sliding over her body. I hear Jessie’s low cry. I hear Toine say, “I won’t.”

I could sneak in the doorframe and watch them. I could crawl along the baseboard. If I could love I would have loved by now. To be in love, and want only the best for that person. My wife, Zahava, was always so happy. She never worried. When things stopped working, she spent time with a first-year lawyer named Mickey who had wide shoulders and thick black hair. It was his baby she got rid of.

“She’s going to have to leave,” Toine says. It’s the afternoon already and we’re near the Oude Kirk having dinner. It’s been raining. The window is open and a priest is sitting with a table full of papers. He’s not unfamiliar. There’s a line of homeless waiting for the church to give them soup. The Oude Kirk is surrounded by prostitutes, some of them men, who cannot afford the more expensive windows near the Bulldog or the Achterburgwal. It’s Toine’s favorite place. Where the old meets the new, he says. Just behind the church is a public restroom, a tin cubicle that hides you from the street and a hole in the ground with a pipe that pours straight into the canal. It’s Monday, the slowest day.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “She’s pretty and smart. She loves you.”

“She’s half Asian and I’m Dutch,” he says by way of explanation. I look at his cheeks to see if he is alluding to something else but his face doesn’t give anything away. A door opens and a large man steps onto the cobblestone, his hair slicked across his head and his shirt tucked in. The prostitute he just visited stands behind him in the doorway, waiting for him to leave. The large man smiles benevolently and makes a big show of kissing the lady he’s just paid. She nods then closes the door and pulls the curtain across it. She takes her place in front of the window.

“That’s bullshit,” I say and he shrugs. “That doesn’t mean anything that she’s Asian.”

“Tell that to the Japanese. Say it doesn’t mean anything that you are Japanese. Tell the Spanish their nationality is irrelevant, a genetic accident. You’re still married, aren’t you?” Toine asks. “You left your ring somewhere.”

“I gave it away at the Taj Mahal, in Atlantic City.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear you’re a gambler. I have a wager for you.”

“I’m not a gambler.”

“But you come from gamblers.”

“My father and my grandfather. But not my mother.”

“You watch that black prostitute Adel. What is it about her? Why don’t you ask her to marry you? She can finish a customer in less than ten minutes. That’s six fucks an hour. You’re lucky she doesn’t have a pimp. She asks me why I let you stand there in front of her window every night. She says you scare away customers, and I tell her I am not your brother or your keeper.” Toine’s watching me and I’m staring back at him. “Forget it,” he says. “I’ll leave. You and Jessie can stay together. That’s best.”

“I don’t want Jessie,” I say.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want?” Toine waits expectantly. I start to say something, but it gets caught between my ears and my mouth. I grab the table. Toine leans his head back and laughs. “Stay in Amsterdam as long as you want,” he says. “It suits you. Look at the old priest. In the middle of all these whores and all he hears is pissing.”

The streets are quiet now, only a few puddles of light from windows still open for business. Two street performers lie sleeping in jesters’ hats, curled around the rail at the end of the bridge. Between the district and where we live there are four waterways and a set of tracks from the Terminus. I pass the new district where the new hostels are and the cafés are named for rock and roll bands—Café The Doors, Café Pink Floyd, where the tourists are still sitting on the porch quietly smoking marijuana. I’ve read that half the population of Amsterdam are illegal aliens.

At home I hang my jacket in the closet. My shirt is out. I pull my belt from my pants. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Jessie says as I’m closing the closet door. She’s standing in the small kitchen, smiling calmly, her makeup washed across her face from different directions. The knives are out and arranged by order of size along the cutting board. She hands me a beer already opened and I take it from her. She’s only wearing a long cotton shirt again, like when I first saw her; it goes halfway to her knees.

There’s a goblet full of red wine in the sink and she lifts it to her lips. Toine is not home. I take a sip from my beer. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to leave,” she says. “Because, you know what, some people can’t be saved.”

“I’m glad you’re leaving.” I turn on the light switch so we can see each other better. “It’s the right thing to do. You’re just hurting yourself.”

She places her hand on the stove burner. “Just like you.”

“I was married,” I tell her.

“What did Toine do to you?” With a small movement she is only inches from me.

I hold my beer in both hands, practically between her breasts. “Nothing,” I say. “And he probably won’t as long as you’re here.”

“Really? I think he did. I think you get him off. Hey,” she says. I don’t answer her. “Look at me.”

I take a long sip on my beer. She pushes closer so when I lower my hand I brush her nipple with my knuckles.

“Leave me alone,” I say.

“Why are you so scared?” I can hear the light bulb over us. “You want to be Toine’s girl? You can’t be, you know. You can’t be someone’s girl.” I take a step back from her and bump against the cabinet.

“I was born here in Amsterdam,” she says. “Two weeks ago, I was barricaded inside of a house and there were men on the other side of the door with torches and guns. Maybe you read about what happened. It turned out they were sponsored by the government. I was sure I was going to die and all I thought about was what I had done to Toine. Have you ever cared about someone that much?”

“No. Not really.” I wonder if it’s true.

“Look at me, Theo.”

“What about what he did to you?” A cockroach scurries behind the fridge. Maybe Toine isn’t coming back here at all. Maybe it’s time I go back to America.

“Look what he’s become. There’s nothing left of him. I don’t know what else I can do. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to fix him.” She dumps the rest of the wine into the sink and it splashes over the sides and across the faucet. She drops the glass into the garbage. “Stop looking like that. You’re like a scared child. I’m not going to try to do anything about it.” I’m wondering what she’s referring to, what it is she had planned that she’s no longer going to do.

It’s almost morning. I feel her weight pressing over the blanket. I wake, then I startle.

“What are you doing?” Jessie is lying next to me, naked, on top of the blanket. I scroll over her body with my eyes as I adjust to the dark. I stare from her ribs to her belly button, over her stomach to the mound of black pubic hair between her legs. Her pressure on the blanket forces the sheet across my shoulders. I’m also naked, but covered. I pull my arm out. The apartment is cold. The windows must be open. She smells unshowered and sweet. There’s a key turning in the lock. The moment quickly passes where I can push her away.

“I want him to see me like this.” So calm, she stares into the ceiling.

“Don’t use me that way. What about me?”

“You’re not losing anything. I’m doing you a favor.”

“I am losing something. No.”

The door opens and then the kitchen light goes on. The yellow light twists its way around the corner and over us. The refrigerator opens then closes. I feel the outline of Jessie’s hips through the sheet with my fingertips. Toine’s dark silhouette crowds the doorframe. From the floor he seems eight feet tall. Jessie parts her legs just the slightest bit, bends her knees up, reaches forward for her ankles. The room has the dry smell of a hospital. In his shadow all I can make out is the smile spilling across Toine’s lips, before he retreats into the other room.

***

The show is the same as always. We’re in the balcony. Down below, Lucy, with her legs scissored, cigar between them, blows puffs of smoke into the rafters.

“Amsterdam is like nowhere else,” I say.

Toine motions toward Rynant with his pinky finger and leans toward me while nodding at the stage. “He has to clean that every night. How do you think he does it?”

Rynant sees Toine pointing at him and bellows, “Homie number one!” Rynant is the strong man in the circus, furrows of skin on his face like a Chinese bulldog. He hoists a keg of beer on either shoulder and marches them down the stairs. I’m drinking whiskey tonight, since we can drink whatever, and Taco clucks at me and shakes his head, smiling. Nothing matters to anyone.

“How could you leave this?” Toine says, waving his arm before him. “Are you sure you can’t be converted? Nowhere else in the world.”

“Stop it,” I say. “It’s not fun anymore.” Winter is coming soon and when winter comes there will be no more work for anyone except Toine and one or two of the others. Jessie has left. Toine and I watched her from the couch. She folded her clothes carefully into two bags and then stood with one in each hand. Toine was as happy as I had ever seen him. I thought he was going to clap.

“You’re like a stone,” she said to Toine. She wasn’t even looking at me. She left the door open and I considered running after her.

An American woman, older and thick with bleached blond hair, someone who was probably never beautiful, is standing in the audience and has taken off her shirt. She’s hefting her breasts in her hands and pushing them to her face where she tries, unsuccessfully, to lick her own nipples. Her lipstick is heavy and her rouge is too thick. She climbs to the stage knees first, where the lesbians have just finished. She strips and sits on the edge and spreads her legs for everyone to see inside of her. This happens sometimes.